The Road to 40 Day 292/365: Back in Training

Vino is finally back in football training after about two months off, but it wasn’t without issues.

Instead of the usual 6pm start, they had to wait for the rain to stop. Vino’s friends were excited to see him, as was he. They asked why he was gone for so long, and they went about their usual shenanigans.

Thankfully, the rain stopped after 30 minutes, and they were able to start training.

Before we enrolled again, we had to ask Vino if he still wanted to train. He said he did, but he didn’t want to do two sessions in a week. If we only did one session, we wouldn’t be able to play games, which he was fine with.

I, however, was not.

See, these sessions are team trainings. The skills he learns are skills he can use in actual match settings. It’s not just honing particular skills, so I feel like it’s a waste to train if he wasn’t going to compete.

When I was younger, I trained in a multi-level Milo camp, but I only finished level 1, which was dribbling. I think I wanted to enroll for level 2, but I guess the logistics of it made it impossible for me to continue.

I can confidently say that I can dribble well, which was why I was a point guard at some point back in high school. I wasn’t good enough to play varsity basketball or even be among the first 8 people in my high school team, but I enjoyed playing basketball with friends with the skills that I had.

For Vino, I understand that he enjoys playing with his friends, and at this point, I believe his only motivation to enroll in the class is to be able to play with his own teammates. However, it’s a pretty expensive series of playdates if that’s what we’re doing.

It’s great that he’s seeing the value of camaraderie and teamwork with this group of guys. But I think it would be built better through competitions. So I put my foot down and told him he either signs up for twice-a-week training or he doesn’t sign up at all.

It will be good for him to have a consistent physical activity. I know kids these days would prefer to be on their tablets (as much as adults want to be stuck on their phones), but he needs to move his body as well.

Back home, I prepared food so that Che would only need to heat it up when she got home. I got this Chicken Pastil recipe Che sent me, which looked pretty easy to make. Like Christian’s version, it’s really the effort of constantly mixing that makes it a bit taxing.

I was happy with how it turned out, though. Che said she had two servings of rice – which was out of the ordinary because she has been going on the same diet as I was. Meanwhile, Vino left maybe two spoonfuls on his plate, which was good enough, I think. He did eat his veggies, which was a win.

I had salad with it, as I continue to clean up my system. I feel like it’s been going great, this new lifestyle and diet. I was able to run while Vino trained, which means I’ve been running every other day thus far.

I just discovered that Decathlon has an app that offers free training programs, so I think I’ll be doing that to pace myself. Coke, who I met last weekend, said he started with 2 minutes walk, 2 minutes run, and slowly built his conditioning to now be able to run for about 20 or 30 minutes.

I think I’ll try building myself up as well, and maybe try signing up for my first run at the end of the year, or maybe earlier. We’ll see how things go.